Buffalo Springfield formed on MY birthday! And a huge tornado hit Jackson, MS and 50 plus people died. So I gues I - uh - should probably shut up, right?
SUCKS to be me. Really.
My name is Michael. And I was born on Saint Michael’s Day (Sept. 29th).
My grandfather has not voted ONCE in his entire votable life and that was in 1950, the day my mother was born. He forgot.
1990 - first time a black person was inaugurated as governor in the US
1980 - I was born and Togo’s constitution became effective and the head of Belgium’s drug brigade was arrested for drug smuggling.
1969 - Beatles release “Yellow Submarine” album (coincidentally, my 21st birthday was a Yellow Submarine birthday. My boyfriend bought me the set of Beatles figs, each of which came with something from the movie, and he also gave me a copy of the movie, which had recently been re-released)
1966 - First black person selected for President cabinet
1957 - First Frisbee produced by Wham-o!
1930 - “Mickey Mouse” comic strip 1st appears
1863 - Thomas Crapper pioneers one-piece pedestal flushing toilet (this one makes me way more amused than it should)
1559 - Elizabeth I crowned queen of England in Westminster Abbey
In addition to all the interesting stuff, a crapload of people have died on my birthday due to earthquakes, fire, and soccer games.
March 25:
421 - Founding of Venice (according to legend)
1655 - Discovery of Titan
1807 - Slavery abolished in the British Empire
1821 - Greek War of Independence begins
1911 - Triangle Shirtwaist fire
1918 - Belarusian People’s Republic established
1947 - Coal mine explosion kills 111 in Centralia, Illinois
1948 - First successful tornado forecast
1957 - European Economic Community established (precursor to the EU)
1965 - Completion of one of several marches lead by Martin Luther King, Jr
1979 - First space shuttle (Columbia) delivered
1990 - Nightclub fire kills 87 in the Bronx
1995 - First Wiki (WikiWikiWeb) launched
2006 - Capitol Hill massacre
Noteable, IMO, events that my birthday (Jan 16) fell on the anniversary of, as listed on wikipedia (sticking to ones that happened before I was born):
27 BC – Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus is granted the title Augustus by the Roman Senate, marking the beginning of the Roman Empire.
1707 – The Scottish Parliament ratifies the Act of Union, paving the way for the creation of Great Britain.
1919 – Temperance movement: The United States ratifies the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, authorizing Prohibition in the United States one year after ratification.
1920 – The League of Nations holds its first council meeting in Paris, France.
1945 – Adolf Hitler moves into his underground bunker, the so-called Führerbunker.
The births of:
1901 – Frank Zamboni
1932 – Dian Fossey
1948 – John Carpenter
1950 – Robert Schimmel
1959 – Sade
1969 – Per “Dead” Ohlin
1970 – Garth Ennis
1974 – Kate Moss
And the deaths of:
1935 – Ma Barker
1936 – Albert Fish
Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech on my 2nd birthday.
I guess that makes me the eldest of the 8-28 group.
It took a very long time until I could find anything memorable on my birthday, but eventually I discovered it was the same day as the Battle of Bosworth Field (aka, “My kingdom for a horse”).
My daughter was born on Armistice Day, though.
I share my birthday with Garfield the Cat, Talk Like A Pirate Day (arrrr!), Greg Louganis brained himself on a diving board in 1988, “Captain EO” starring Micheal Jackson premieres at EPCOT (1986) and the Mary Tyler Moore show debuted (1970). 
666 years earlier Dante began his descent into hell.
I, too, shall hate those who send me such comestibles like unto the heat of a thousand burning suns and set immediately to plotting their horrible bloody demise as soon as I come down from the sugar high and stop going AR NOM NOM NOM like Cookie Monster, whose birthday I forgot to mention I share. How did they come up with the Muppets’s birthdays, anyway?
Groundhog Day
I have no idea. Was there one before 1879?
On the day of my birth, Tricia Nixon got married at the White House.
23 years later, OJ Simpson killed his ex-wife.
Hymen Lipman patents a pencil with an attached eraser
Beat that you pretenders.
1325 – Alfonso IV becomes King of Portugal.
1558 – France takes Calais, the last continental possession of England.
1598 – Boris Godunov becomes Czar of Russia.
1608 – Fire destroys Jamestown, Virginia.
1610 – Galileo Galilei makes his first observation of the four Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, although he is not able distinguish the last two until the following day.
1782 – The first American commercial bank, the Bank of North America, opens.
1785 – Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon.
1797 – The modern Italian flag is first used.
1835 – HMS Beagle drops anchor off the Chonos Archipelago.
1885 - Alois and Klara Hitler are married. Adolf is born four years later.
1894 – William Kennedy Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film.
1904 – The distress signal “CQD” is established only to be replaced two years later by “SOS”.
1919 – Montenegrin guerrilla fighters rebel against the planned annexation of Montenegro by Serbia, but fail.
1920 – The New York State Assembly refuses to seat five duly elected Socialist assemblymen.
1922 – Dáil Éireann ratifies the Anglo-Irish Treaty by a 64-57 vote.
1927 – The first transatlantic telephone service is established – from New York, New York to London, England, United Kingdom.
1931 – Guy Menzies flies the first solo non-stop trans-Tasman flight (from Australia to New Zealand) in 11 hours and 45 minutes, crash-landing on New Zealand’s west coast.
1935 – Benito Mussolini and French Foreign minister Pierre Laval sign the Franco-Italian Agreement.
1940 – Winter War: The Finnish 9th Division stops and completely destroys the overwhelming Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi road.
1942 – World War II: The siege of the Bataan Peninsula begins.
1945 – World War II: British General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference in which he claims credit for victory in the Battle of the Bulge.
1948 – Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell crashes while in pursuit of a supposed UFO.
1954 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: the first public demonstration of a machine translation system, is held in New York at the head office of IBM.
1959 – The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro.
1960 – The Polaris missile is test launched.
1968 – Surveyor Program: Surveyor 7, the last spacecraft in the Surveyor series, lifts off from launch complex 36A, Cape Canaveral.
1973 – Mark Essex fatally shoots 10 people and wounds 13 others at Howard Johnson’s Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, before being shot to death by police officers.
1979 – Third Indochina War – Cambodian–Vietnamese War: Phnom Penh falls to the advancing Vietnamese troops, driving out Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
1980 – President Jimmy Carter authorizes legislation giving $1.5 billion in loans to bail out the Chrysler Corporation.
1984 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
1985 – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches Sakigake, Japan’s first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the United States or the Soviet Union.
1989 – Prince Akihito is sworn in as the emperor of Japan after the death of his father Hirohito
1990 – The interior of the Leaning Tower of Pisa is closed to the public because of safety concerns.
1991 – Roger Lafontant, former leader of the Tonton Macoutes in Haiti under François Duvalier, attempts a coup d’état, which ends in his arrest.
1993 – The Fourth Republic of Ghana is inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings as President.
1993 – Bosnian War: The Bosnian Army executes a surprise attack on the village of Kravica in Srebrenica.
1999 – The Senate trial in the impeachment of U.S. President Bill Clinton begins.
2010 – Muslim gunmen open fire on a crowd of Coptic Christians leaving church after celebrating a midnight Christmas mass, killing eight of them as well as one Muslim bystander.
Canada Day!
April 21’st
Charlotte Brontë born 1855
Anthony Quinn born 1915
Elizabeth Windsor (that gal who is having a diamond jubilee these days) born 1926
Tony Danza born 1951
Nicole Sullivan (mad TV) born 1970
Me! born 1971
Muerto, I’m reasonably sure he hadn’t been Death 
April 23rd is also the feast of St George, patron (among many other places) of the lands of the fomer Crown of Aragon. It’s unclear when did books become a traditional St George’s gift in Catalonia, but it was before the UN even came into being.
Me, too!
On my birthday (and his) in 1993, Prince celebrated by changing his name to a symbol.
I’m considering doing the same - that way I could go from having the most common name in the world to something totally unpronounceable!
Feel free to send me heartfelt birthday greetings later this week.